Origins
by thefrustratedxerneas
Summary: (Phanniemay 1) Three days after being transformed into a half-ghost, Danny is left alone with his thoughts in the wee hours of the morning.
You wake up with a start, your eyes flying open as your body jolts almost to the point of falling off the bed. Your heart pounding against the walls of your chest like a prisoner desperate for escape, you take a handful of deep breaths as you force yourself to calm down. This is the third night in a row you've had this dream, and consequently the third night in a row you've been without sleep. In the 72 hours since the accident, you estimate you've only slept for about 5 of them. Over and over again it replays in your head, and each time it terrifies you just as much as the first. You just can't desensitize yourself to this kind of thing. You'd think being dead would have sunk in by now.

Well... sort of dead. Sometimes dead, sometimes not? Your head hurts just thinking about it. Unfortunately that's all that's been occupying your mind for the past couple of days - that and the lust for a good night's sleep. You found you've been able to cross the line between dead and alive at will. One moment you can be breathing in the pollen-thick Colorado spring air and hankering for a Nasty Burger, and the next you can feel your blood slowing to a halt in your veins, your face growing pale and hollow, your eyes glowing a sickly lime. Then, if you so wish, you can transform right back into fourteen-year-old Danny Fenton, alive and kicking, whose only fault of health is a couple of blackheads on his nose. You hate this, whatever it is, with a burning passion. As if you were already comfortable in your own pubescent body; now you have to deal with being a ghost for Pete's sake.

You shift your gaze from the ceiling, riddled with stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars that can't help but remind you of your 'condition,' to the digital clock projecting the time on the wall. 5:25. Fantastic. Your alarm's going to ring in 5 minutes. You turn it off with a slam of your fist and haul yourself out of bed and into the shower, not even bothering to turn on the hot water. Looks like it'll be another long day at school.

Maybe Tucker and Sam will start talking to you again today. They haven't been avoiding you, per se, as you've still done group work with them in every class and sat with them at lunch, but not a word has passed the lips of any of you toward each other since they egged you into going into the ghost portal. They'd just needed a picture, hadn't they? They seem guilty about it, and they should. Maybe they'll stop feeling sorry for themselves if you forgive them. Tough nuts, you think, it's not going to be that simple.

Deep down you wish you could let it go. They didn't technically kill you, and they hadn't meant for any of this to happen. It was just 'adolescent antics,' as Lancer called it. They'd never wish harm on you. They're your only friends, and they know how much you trust them. They'd be ridiculous to think that they could get away with doing anything to you on purpose, what with how deep in trouble they'd be if Jazz found out. They'd be digging their graves. (Wait, no, that's not a good analogy. Nevermind.)

Then the thought strikes you: What if they aren't talking to you because they're afraid of you? You quit scrubbing your armpits for a moment to consider this. After the accident, you'd tested out what you could do for awhile, since the three of you had pretty much confirmed you'd become a ghost. You found that you could lift yourself off the ground just by thinking about it, and propel yourself in any direction as easily as you could clench your fist. Accidentally flying straight into a wall - it was hard to get a hang of this thing - didn't result in a crash but rather an instinctive 'phase shift' that allowed you to move your molecules around solid matter. You'd ended up submerged in the earth outside of your basement unscathed, and were able to 'phase' right back in with ease. Apparently you'd been invisible at the same time, according to Sam and Tucker.

All that was unsettling, of course, but what probably scared them the most was when Sam had offered to retrieve your dad from the kitchen. Realizing that both of your parents could find out you'd been turned into a ghost, you hadn't quite liked the chances that they'd try to destroy or capture you. So when you'd instinctively extended your hand and shouted, "No!" you must've accidentally pulled a ghost muscle or some bizarre science along those lines (you'd never listened to your parents' lectures), which had caused a ball of ectoplasmic energy to shoot out of your hand and straight in Sam's direction. It'd missed her, admittedly by a small margin, but the looks on your friends' faces would've caused your heart to stop beating if it hadn't already. They'd went home right after that, without mentioning anything to your family.

You finish your shower and climb out of the bathtub, immediately moving to dress yourself without thinking to dry off beforehand. You're so preoccupied that you're reaching for the doorknob before you realize that you and your clothes are still sodding wet. Muttering words under your breath that you're sure your parents wouldn't want to hear, you wrap your towel around your body and head to your room to pick out a new outfit. You hope you're just overthinking things.


End file.
